Oh the Marvelous, Myriad Morass of Malaprops!

Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are just dumbfounding. But these mistakes, if you catch them, might just strike one of those chords.

And no, I'm not pulling a V with that title. (By the way, I'm also not referencing the weird TV series about the aliens with this comment. It's from a comic that was made into a movie in 2006.)

But first, you might be wondering what exactly a malapropism is. Well, there are two ways to find out. You can go read the play "The Rivals" by Richard Sheridan and intuit it from the text, or you can just look it up, which isn't as much fun.

In the end, a malapropism happens when a person says or writes a word correctly but uses it in the wrong context. My copy of the "Webster Contemporary Dictionary" says a malapropism is "an absurd misuse of words that sound somewhat alike."

One of my favorites from the play will always be the "allegory on the banks of the Nile." Though being a "progeny of learning" is something else entirely, and you had better watch out for those "contagious countries" in Europe.

By the way, "The Rivals" isn't a new play by any means. It was written in the 18th century. I believe it was first performed in the mid-1770s.

On a personal note, I had the pleasure of playing this role in high school, in 1999.*

In an earlier post, I mentioned President "Back" Obama and all the things we take for "granite."

One word: Oops.

So if the number of traffic "fatties" is going down, someone is graduating with a "bachelorette" degree, a teenager has been arrested and charged with "passion" of a controlled substance, or you ask for forgiveness saying you will go "flatulate" yourself... Well I think those speak for themselves.

And before you accuse me of making any of those up, I have to say no, I'm not. Every single one of those is a malapropism I have seen or heard. And they are only a few, choice picks, of the mass of such mistakes I have seen.

These may seem like fairly obvious mistakes, but, as I stated in that aforementioned earlier post, you won't catch them unless you proofread. And even then, some might get through.

Still, even in a potentially serious situation, you can find a moment of hilarity. For instance, near the beginning of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, my mother and I accompanied my father to the emergency room after he had fallen one night. While there, I noticed a sign posted on one of the cabinets about hand washing when entering and "existing" a room.

I would certainly hope a person would be existing when entering such a place. And remaining that way upon exiting would be a plus.

Especially for all those drug "attics" who just have to get their fix, ranging from oxycodone to "plackebos." I couldn't figure out any other way to write that one to show how the person mispronounced it...

Enough with the examples for while.

Even though these mistakes can be funny, just like bad writing and grammar, they reduce the credibility of the writer. That is if a reader even notices the mistake.

What makes malapropisms so very tricky is the simple fact that the word IS similar even though it's incorrect. Take the "bachelorette" degree for example. The correct word would be baccalaureate or maybe bachelor's. But if you weren't sure how to spell the correct word, you might take a guess and then use spell check. That might bring up the other, like the horror story I was once heard about a graduate student writing his thesis on Madame "Ovary."

I've mentioned before that sometimes my brain will simply not a register a mistake because to me, it looks correct. But then fresh eyes find problems.

For example, in my post about the spelling and grammar problems in text language, I accidentally wrote something was "detonating" rather than denoting. My sister caught that one, so I'm just as likely to make these mistakes as anyone else.

I have never claimed that I don't make mistakes when it comes to my writing, but that's why, in my proofreading post, I talked about having fresh eyes look at something I write to make sure it's correct.

In the same way, other people may be reading so quickly, they will simply breeze over a mistake like a malapropism and their brain will read it the way it's supposed to be.

Just like this line a co-worker sent to me once - "Too bee, ore naught (knot) two bee." All those words are spelled correctly and the line still reads correctly, but if you've ever read "Hamlet," you'll know it's wrong. Heck, even if you haven't read "Hamlet," just about everybody knows that line and would recognize it (even in Klingon).

In the end though, it all comes back to looking over the words on the paper or on the screen.

Probably the biggest problem with malapropisms is the simple fact that, for many, spell check won't catch them.

So back to proofreading.

Please, I don't want to be "scent" to jail for pointing out these glitches, but still, nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing replaces proofreading as a way to prevent them.


* Funny story related to my playing Mrs. Malaprop... I was out visiting a university in Arizona, auditioning for music and theater. On the flight back to Virginia, my mother was helping me rehearse my lines. She had the script and was giving me my cues. After the plane landed and we were preparing to disembark, I was surprised to get a Standing O from the other passengers, some of whom told us they spent the whole flight listening.

In the end, I didn't attend that university. I got a better offer from the University of Missouri. I happen to be the sixth member of my family to attend Mizzou, and the fourth to graduate.